This is the first of several articles designed to keep you from becoming an evil n00b. The majority of Part I was found elsewhere. If you follow the basic guidelines set down here, you will not get shunned, and may actually make some friends.
RESPECT FOR THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Basically, this means that you adhere to the basic rules and formalities of the English language in its written form, like capitalization, punctuation, proper and full spelling of words, etc. In other words, don’t type like an idiot.
Most of you do a great job when writing your posts, others, not really, and some, not at all. Don’t you think your teacher would kill you for ‘tiping leik dis’ at school? Maybe not, but you’d get held back a grade.
There’s really no excuse for typing like an idiot. Seriously kids, what does it accomplish? So I’d like to go over a couple of points, first some tips and reminders on how not to abuse the English language, and then on why it’s important.
Section I – Proper English and You
USE THE DAMN SHIFT KEY
There are two shift keys on your keyboard. They are located on either side of the keyboard, are elongated, and say ‘shift’ on them. Normally when you type letters, they are lowercase. But if you press the shift key and hold it down while typing a letter, that letter will be uppercase.
Uppercase letters are most commonly used to capitalize the first word of a sentence, proper nouns, titles, and the pronoun ‘I’. A proper noun is typically the name of a place or person, like Pittsburgh, Shawn Hartnell, or the Rocky Mountains. Common sense will usually tell you when a noun is a proper noun.
WRITE OUT YOUR DAMN WORDS
I see a lot of abbreviated words around, and it makes me wonder if the people writing them really are as lazy as the act of abbreviating a four letter word into a three letter word leads me to believe. Make sure to spell words as they are meant to be spelled, and don’t use dumb shortcuts so you can type one less letter.
For example, the word ‘before’ is spelled ‘before,’ not ‘b4’. ‘You’ is not ‘u’. ‘To’ and ‘too’ are not ‘2’. ‘What’ is not spelled ‘wat’. ‘This’ is not spelled ‘dis’. There are thousands of examples, but they all make me die a little inside, so I’ll leave it at that. You’ve all read at least one or two books, and are past the point in school where you’ve been taught to read and write, and I’m sure you’ve all read enough to know the spelling of horribly common words like ‘this’ and ‘what’, so there’s no excuse to cop out and abbreviate them and countless words like them.
Spell all words how they are meant to be spelled. This does not mean we expect your spelling to be perfect, but we at least expect you to not resort to retarded and deliberate misspellings.
USE PUNCTUATION
This means use those things called periods and commas and apostrophes and stuff. Also, use quotation marks, “”, around dialogue when you’re writing stories or whatever. Periods go at the end of sentences and commas are used to denote a dependent clause in a sentence, or to separate items when listing things. Apostrophes can be used in contractions, in such words like ‘can’t’, ‘I’m’, ‘isn’t’, etc. They are also used in possession, as in: Tehraptor's whack program. This is really basic stuff, kids.
LEARN SOME CONSTRAINT
Basically, don’t excrete stupidity in excess. This means only using ONE, maybe two, exclamation points instead of thirty seven. Don’t type entire sentences or posts in all caps. It’s really obnoxious. And don’t lol. It pisses me off.
Section II – Representing Yourself Online
Okay, so we’ve talked about how to not type like an idiot, but now the question is, why is that we don’t want you to type like this? Because it makes you look like an idiot? That may very well be a start…
DON’T TYPE LIKE AN IDIOT: IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT
Yes, using chatspeak and other forms of bad English do not make you look cool or smart, it makes you look really, really dumb. Remember, this is the internet, and people can only judge you and get to know you by what you write, and how you write it. If I type “LOLOLOL dat iz so0o0o funnee!!!!11”, I come across as an idiot. If I type, “HAHA that’s really funny!” I come across as a normal person. If I type, “i think dat gamedesignnovice iz asome it iz sooo cul other ppl shud jn it” I sound like an imbecile. But if I type, “I think that Game Design Novice is awesome. It is so cool. Other people should join it.”, I do not sound like an idiot at all, even though I just said the exact same thing.
If you don’t bother to use Proper English, it sends the message that you are lazy and/or stupid, and that you do not care about what you are posting about because you can’t be bothered to stop and think how words are actually spelled, or to use the shift key.
Take the time to write your posts using proper English. I’ve had people complain that they are slow typists and it takes them a long time. So what? It personally takes me longer to type in chatspeak because I have to think of retarded alternate wrong/abbreviated spellings for all the words. So get in the habit of using good English and learning good writing skills. It will make writing assignments for school easier, and it will make people respect you and what you have to say on this forum a lot more. Proper English is a HUGE step towards sounding articulate and smart. You don’t want everyone to think you’re an idiot, now do you?
Edited By Tehraptor
Lord of awesomeness, pie, etc.